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November 22, 2009
2007-11-15 - Author Tracy Kidder Speaks at Bunker Hill Community College
Boston, November 15 – Tracy Kidder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World, spoke today at Bunker Hill Community College to a packed audience of students, faculty, staff and community members.
Kidder told the story of Paul Farmer, an American who grew up in poverty, became a physician, established a free clinic in Haiti to treat drug-resistant tuberculosis and is now opening clinics in Africa to fight AIDS. Kidder explained that Farmer believes that health is a human right and that no disease is too complicated, too widespread or too expensive to tackle, even in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.
Kidder spoke as part of Bunker Hill’s One Book project, which has engaged the entire college community in reading and discussing a single book. The One Book idea was initiated in 1998 by the Washington Center for the Book. It has spread throughout the country, with cities, towns, companies schools and colleges agreeing to read and discuss a particular book.
Faculty at the College have incorporated the book into courses ranging from Economics to Cultural Anthropology, Psychology, Biology and History/Government. “Mountains Beyond Mountains is an inspiration for us all,” said BHCC President Mary L. Fifield.
The tale of the charismatic doctor has had a powerful effect on the Bunker Hill community. “Mountains Beyond Mountainschanged my life. It gave me a direction for my passion for social change,” said BHCC student Olga Dyakova. “Reading about the tragic reality of poverty in so many countries stirred my indignation and convinced me that inaction is no longer an option.”
Kidder, a Vietnam veteran, has also written The Soul of a New Machine, about early computers at Digital Equipment Corporation; Among Schoolchildren, about a public school in Holyoke, Massachusetts; and My Detachment: A Memoir, about his service in Vietnam. In addition to the Pulitzer Prize, Kidder’s work has won a National Book Award and a Robert F. Kennedy Award.
Bunker Hill Community College is the largest community college in Massachusetts. The College enrolls more than 8,800 students on two campuses and at five satellite locations each semester. Some 1,700 students take classes online. BHCC is one of the most diverse institutions of higher education in the Commonwealth. Six in ten students are people of color and more than half of BHCC’s students are women. The College also enrolls more than 600 international students who come from more than 95 countries and speak more than 75 different languages.
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